“I came out of it,” I said.  “My ship went down in the storm yesterday.  Your little cockboat yonder was more fortunate.”  I waved my hand toward that ship of three hundred tons, then twirled my mustaches and stood at gaze.

“Was your ship so large, then?” demanded Paradise, while a murmur of admiration, larded with oaths, ran around the circle.

“She was a very great galleon,” I replied, with a sigh for the good ship that was gone.

A moment’s silence, during which they all looked at me.  “A galleon,” then said Paradise softly.

“They that sailed her yesterday are to-day at the bottom of the sea,” I continued.  “Alackaday! so are one hundred thousand pezos of gold, three thousand bars of silver, ten frails of pearls, jewels uncounted, cloth of gold and cloth of silver.  She was a very rich prize.”

The circle sucked in their breath.  “All at the bottom of the sea?” queried Red Gil, with gloating eyes fixed upon the smiling water.  “Not one pezo left, not one little, little pearl?”

I shook my head and heaved a prodigious sigh.  “The treasure is gone,” I said, “and the men with whom I took it are gone.  I am a captain with neither ship nor crew.  I take you, my friends, for a ship and crew without a captain.  The inference is obvious.”

The ring gaped with wonder, then strange oaths arose.  Red Gil broke into a bellow of angry laughter, while the Spaniard glared like a catamount about to spring.  “So you would be our captain?” said Paradise, picking up another shell, and poising it upon a hand as fine and small as a woman’s.

“Faith, you might go farther and fare worse,” I answered, and began to hum a tune.  When I had finished it, “I am Kirby,” I said, and waited to see if that shot should go wide or through the hull.

For two minutes the dash of the surf and the cries of the wheeling sea fowl made the only sound in that part of the world; then from those half-clad rapscallions arose a shout of “Kirby!”—­a shout in which the three leaders did not join.  That one who looked a gentleman rose from the sand and made me a low bow.  “Well met, noble captain,” he cried in those his honey tones.  “You will doubtless remember me who was with you that time at Maracaibo when you sunk the galleasses.  Five years have passed since then, and yet I see you ten years younger and three inches taller.”

“I touched once at the Lucayas, and found the spring de Leon sought,” I said.  “Sure the waters have a marvelous effect, and if they give not eternal youth at least renew that which we have lost.”

“Truly a potent aqua vitae,” he remarked, still with thoughtful melancholy.  “I see that it hath changed your eyes from black to gray.”

“It hath that peculiar virtue,” I said, “that it can make black seem white.”

The man with the woman’s mantle drawn about him now thrust himself from the rear to the front rank.  “That’s not Kirby!” he bawled.  “He’s no more Kirby than I am Kirby!  Didn’t I sail with Kirby from the Summer Isles to Cartagena and back again?  He’s a cheat, and I am a-going to cut his heart out!” He was making at me with a long knife, when I whipped out my rapier.